This invention relates to a method of producing a body of doped semiconductor material having a certain mean free path length for free charge carriers and a mean free path length for free charge carriers smaller than the certain mean free path length.
A body of the type defined above is proposed in the older German Patent Application 100 30 381.1 (=2000P12486 DE), the content of which is part of the present patent application. This body has a junction between doped semiconductor material of one type of conductivity and doped semiconductor material of a type of conductivity opposite that of the one type of conductivity. Due to the smaller mean free path length, the blocking ability of the body is increased. In the case of an electronic component produced with this body, in order to minimize the switching power losses and forward power losses that occur in the body during operation of this component, it may be desirable not to reduce the mean free path length throughout the entire body but instead only locally in that area in which high electric field strengths occur during a blocking state of the component.